


This is a Test

by raving_liberal



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Baby Black Widow, Gen, Minor Violence, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Red Room (Marvel), Training, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8081680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: The Winter Soldier still hadn't shaken off the stupor of cryo when they shoved him into the cage with the girl, bolting the cage door and then padlocking the bolt.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those weird fics I find in Google Docs in the morning that I wrote on my meds in the bath tub and don't really remember writing, aka Med-Me wrote this.

The Winter Soldier still hadn't shaken off the stupor of cryo when they shoved him into the cage with the girl, bolting the cage door and then padlocking the bolt. They left the room after that, a second bolt sliding into place behind a steel door. The Soldier stood on one side of the cage, observing the girl, and the girl stood on the other, warily watching the Soldier. 

She was a tiny thing, the girl, only to mid-chest on the Soldier. She held herself like a dancer, and was in fact dressed in what was probably once the uniform of a dancer, a faded black leotard and a pair of hard-toed slippers all scuffed and ragged. The stains at the toes looked like blood. The little girl held no weapon and wore no armor, but she drew herself up and set her shoulders back, blanked her face. Her hair was bright red, not quite the color of the star on the Soldier’s shoulder, and had been cut into a severe bob just below her ears. 

The Soldier’s hair still dripped salt water from the revival process. His thoughts were foggy and slow, as were his muscles, still working out the bone-deep chill from the cryo chamber. Only the mechanical arm was really awake. It whirred and shifted, making the air around it ripple. Once, for the briefest second, the girl looked at the arm. The thin line of her mouth trembled then for less than a breath, less than one of the Soldier’s sluggish heartbeats, before it set itself again into the blank, grim mask. 

“What do you want?” the Soldier asked her. His words slurred, language protocol not properly calibrated. The Russian felt strange and spongy in his mouth, though the Soldier had no memory of ever speaking any other language. 

The girl glanced around the room with her eyes only, keeping her head and body pointed towards the soldier. The Soldier noted the plain red walls beyond the bars of the cage. Though large, the room contained nothing but the cage, the Soldier, and the little girl dressed like a dancer. He watched her check the corners and scan the ceiling, then did the same himself, confirming the lack of visible cameras or one-way glass panels. Perhaps they were truly locked in here, together but alone, the little girl and the ancient Soldier.

“I am Natalia,” the girl said. She made the name sound like a challenge, like something she expected him to not only recognize, but respond to. 

“I don't care who you are,” the Soldier said, his flesh hand flapping a dismissive wave in her direction. Caring took energy and memory, and he had an excess of neither presently. “What do you want?”

The girl’s masked expression slipped, her eyebrows sinking down between her eyes, digging a deep furrow across her round forehead. She shifted her weight back, dropping onto her heels. The brave set of her shoulders flagged.

“You are to train me,” the girl said uncertainly. “They say all the girls come here.”

“I don't know any girls,” the Soldier said. He decided he had stood long enough without any indication that orders were forthcoming, so he crouched instead. The girl flinched, moving a few inches back without seeming aware she had done so. The Soldier frowned as he moved from crouching to sitting, his elbows resting on his knees. 

“This is a test,” the girl said. “You’re testing me.”

The Soldier shrugged, flexing the fingers of the mechanical hand so the arm’s metal plates ripples. He made a face at the girl, not really a smile, but a bared-teeth facsimile of one. “I do not test little girls. Why would I? I have no use for little girls.”

The girl grew paler then and backed herself against the cage bars as far from the Soldier as possible. He watched her, a feeling tugging at him. After a few moments of watching the girl cower by the bars, the Soldier identified the feeling as annoyance. He exhaled loudly through his nose and closed his eyes, waiting for someone to come and remove the girl and give him a mission objective.

Hours passed, but no one came. The girl eyed the Soldier warily from the far wall of the cage, and the Soldier mostly kept his eyes closed and ignored the girl. After another hour passed, the Soldier let his mind slip into the beta wave pattern that assured mental acuity for whatever mission objectives he may later be assigned. He had barely let go of his full awareness of his surroundings when he felt the girl moving towards him, a single graceful leap that gave her slight body enough force to topple him over. 

The Soldier rolled to the side, away from her, hands up to ward her off. He had neither wish nor need to hurt her. He had been given no orders to that end. He wanted the girl to be still and return to her side of the cage again, allowing him to rest until a handler came to remove one or both of them. The girl didn't accept his gesture, however. She flipped onto her feet and flung herself at the Soldier again, making him back away to avoid further physical contact. The girl growled like a feral animal.

“Stop,” the Soldier said to her, holding both hands up in supplication. Why should he hurt this girl? They would come for her soon, if only she would be still and patient. Instead of stopping, the girl performed a handspring and brought her legs down at him. He batted her away while she was still in the air. She crumpled onto the floor, panting.

“This is a test,” she said, her voice harder this time.

“Stay,” the Soldier ordered her.

“You're supposed to train me,” the girl said. “I am at the top of my class. They sent me here to you to train me.”

“They sent you here for nothing. I don't know why you’re here. Stay there,” the Soldier said, pointing to the spot where the girl knelt. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. 

“No!” she shrieked. She flung herself at the Soldier, beating at him with her small fists. When he failed to respond, she climbed up him, wrapping her thin legs around his neck, cutting off the flow of oxygen to his brain. The Soldier was surprised by the girl’s strength, and by how little his body seemed concerned about his compromised airway. He allowed the girl to pull him to the floor, his body going limp. She made a novice’s mistake by releasing him then, and the Soldier used this opportunity to toss her to the ground.

“Stay. Someone will come for you,” the Soldier instructed. 

The little girl’s angry red face matched her red hair. She showed her teeth in a snarl. Her second incisors were missing, emphasizing the oversized look of her permanent front teeth. The Soldier felt something new – amusement and affection. The fierce, brave little girl did not accept that she should be still. She did not accept that she could not win this fight. Her stubbornness pleased the Soldier, though he didn't understand why it should.

“Maybe this is the test,” the girl said. “Maybe _you_ are the test. If I kill you, I pass. If you kill me, I fail.”

“That sounds wasteful,” the Soldier said. Regret at the idea of killing her.

“If you do not kill me now, I will find you later. I will find you some day and kill you,” the girl said.

The Soldier feigned a yawn. “Did you come to kill me, little girl, or to tell me bedtime stories?”

The girl bared her teeth again. “This is no story. A day will come when you will wish you had killed me.”

She stood up then and lithely stepped between the cage bars. Of course she was small enough to fit between them. The Soldier should have realized, and he cursed himself internally for failing to see it. The girl rapped on the door twice.

“You will wish you had killed me when you had this chance, Soldat,” the girl said. A bolt clanked and screeched, metal across metal, outside the door.

“I look forward to it, Natalia,” the Soldier promised. The girl stared at him, startled, but then the door opened and she was pulled away. 

They brought other little girls after that, also dressed as dancers, but none were as fierce as red-haired Natalia, and whether they lived or died in the cage was of no consequence to him. He never remembered any of their faces.


End file.
